The Ups and Downs of Texas Tank Watching

Yesterday started out with an interesting summary on the Lab Padre cameras when I was waking up.  Their summary ended with the statement that road closures started in the afternoon and were accompanied by an overpressure notice for people living there in Boca Chica village, near the shipyard.  An overpressure notice is almost always saying they plan to do a static firing.

A few hours later, the mention of overpressure went away.  There were road closures and the next section of the Orbital Launch Integration Tower (OLIT) was transported to the launch complex.  

Today went similarly; an overpressure notice early that went away a few hours later.  Road closures were cancelled, so there's nothing waiting to move between the two major areas, the shipyard and launch complex.  Later today, Teslarati was reporting that the static firing has slipped to next Monday at the earliest.  

The bigger story that broke yesterday is that the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) made the story public that the environmental impact study that was done for SpaceX in 2014 is invalid and they're re-doing it.  The FAA claims it's invalid because it was based on Falcon 9 class vehicles and not Starship which is many times bigger.  The FAA is apparently doing the environmental impact study itself; there's no mention of them outsourcing it to the EPA.  Further, the FAA says any work SpaceX does on the OLIT is at their own risk.  I read that as saying any money they spend building the OLIT is wasted if the FAA says to tear it down.  Isn't that always the case?

• The Federal Aviation Administration has warned Elon Musk’s SpaceX that work on a massive launch tower will be included in the agency’s ongoing environmental review of the Starship facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
• “The company is building the tower at its own risk,” an FAA spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday, noting that the environmental review could recommend taking down the launch tower.

I don't know what would cause them to rule that way, but God forbid there be something like a Saltwater Marsh Beetle that lives nowhere else, or a Texas Snail Darter different from any other little fish.  

SpaceX has conducted multiple short test flights of Starship prototypes over the past year. However, the company needs the FAA to complete the environmental review and issue a license to take the next step in the rocket’s testing. Company leadership has set ambitious goals for the Starship program, with President Gwynne Shotwell last month saying SpaceX is “shooting for July” to launch the first orbital spaceflight of its Starship rocket.
....
The FAA’s letter on May 6 came in response to SpaceX saying in a prior letter that the launch tower in Boca Chica should not be a part of the environmental review because the company “only intends to use the integration tower for production, research, and development purposes and not for FAA-licensed or -permitted launches.”

“However, SpaceX’s project description in the administrative draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment provided to the FAA on May 5, 2021 indicates otherwise,” FAA safety authorization division manager Daniel Murray wrote in response.

The FAA further emphasized that the “480-foot-tall integration tower is substantially taller than the water tower and lightning towers assessed in the 2014” environmental review.

The bright spot was local, and we could have seen it if we tried.  The new drone ship, A Shortfall Of Gravitas arrived at Port Canaveral early today.  Instead of Thursday evening as quoted a couple of days ago, ASOG arrived closer to 12:30 PM EDT. 

The ultimate destination for ASOG is in the back right of the port which is in the top left corner of this picture.  There are three basins, all on the right (north) side of the port.  The last basin has a pair of large cranes, and at full-size I think recovery drone Just Read The Instructions is visible on southeast end of that basin.